Alex Green is a Senior Lecturer at the University of York. His publications have appeared in periodicals such as the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Australian Year Book of International Law, Transnational Legal Theory, and the European Human Rights Law Review. His research has been funded by the Modern Law Review Covid-19 Response Fellowship and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

'In a time when the authority of international law is either idealized or scorned, there has never been more need for ethically informed and methodologically unorthodox reexplorations of its foundations. Alex Green's book fills a remarkably missing piece of the international law puzzle: a normative theory of why we should recognize state creation aside from its factuality. Beyond 'territory,' 'population' or 'government,' what primarily inclines international law to recognize states is the deference to the value of 'political community,' independent of actual political regimes. A brilliant rethinking of an area that deserves better than doctrinal repetition.' Frédéric Mégret, Professor of Law, McGill University

• Introduction: reconstructing the law of state creation; Part I. Political Community: 1. Political ethics and community membership; 2. Political action and valuable institutions; 3. The antecedents of statehood; 4. Five procedural principles; Part II. Stability, Legitimacy, and Democracy: 5. The stability thesis; 6. The legitimacy thesis; 7. Democratic legitimacy; Conclusion: The nature and resilience of statehood.